Cuba News

By Nick Miroff HAVANA, Cuba a ' With more than 115,000 barrels per day of Venezuelan oil flowing to this island, Cuba gets more than enough crude to cover its electricity needs.

Madrid, Nov 28 Exiled Cuban author and journalist Julio San Francisco documents the struggle for press freedom in his homeland in 'Prensa Gulag', an online novel that the co-founder of an independent news agency on the island has been working on for much of his life.

In a sidebar titled Health without Wealth the Lonely Planet travel guide to Havana gushes about the impressive achievements of the Cuban health care system.

Summary: A weekly 30 minute review of news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio.

Havana, Nov 26 The Defense Exercise "Bastion 2009" is starting Thursday in Cuba with the slogan "Actions of the country and territories during the period of crisis to face military aggressions of the enemy on a large scale." The aim of the three-day maneuver is to train leadership and command structures, and strengthen the preparation of military ...

Communist Cuba's shift away from the leadership of Fidel Castro to his brother President Raul Castro has failed to end human rights violations including persistent aggression against dissidents.

By Tom Evans, CNN November 23, 2009 8:26 p.m. EST A European Union commissioner Monday told CNN's Christiane Amanpour that Europe's policy toward Cuba in the future will place less emphasis on human rights in the island nation than now.

HAVANA, Cuba Bruno Rodriguez and Stephen Smith, Foreign Affairs Ministers of Cuba and Australia respectively, signed a memorandum of understanding on Monday in Havana.

Cubans are scrambling to turn off lights and appliances and children are going door to door reminding them to do just that under a government threat of dreaded blackouts if energy consumption is not reduced through the end of the year.

Cuban refugee Yoanki Hernandez Leyva, 28, is studying facilities management at La Roche College in McCandless.

The novelist Jos Manuel Prieto and Nation contributor Daniel Wilkinson , the deputy director of the Americas division at Human Rights Watch, recently discussed Prieto's essay " Travels by Taxi ," one of the pieces in The Nation 's 2009 Fall Books issue, forthcoming on November 25.

By John Andrew Prime * jprime@gannett.com * November 23, 2009 The cigar-chomping, no-nonsense general who lifted New Orleans from the depths of Hurricane Katrina in late 2005 thinks Cuba has some important lessons to teach the United States in storm-fighting, and he wants warmer relations with the nation's neighbor to the south for that reason.

HAVANA: Nearly 50 years after a botched US-directed invasion of Cuba, the communist nation said yesterday it is holding a military exercise next week to boost preparedness against any future US attack.

It has been reported from Algeria that a court has acquitted two former detainees of the Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba.

Havana, Nov 21 Graduated doctors from the Latin American Medicine School presented the experiences they obtained from an integral attention program to oncology patients at public health primary level in a Cuban community Friday.

Supporters of the U.S. embargo against Cuba have contributed nearly $11 million to members of Congress since 2004 in a largely successful effort to block efforts to weaken sanctions against the island, a new report shows.

An Algerian court on Sunday acquitted two former detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, who were returned home to face charges of links to terrorism, their defense lawyer said.

An elderly US couple charged with spying for Cuba for almost 30 years have pleaded guilty, with the husband agreeing to serve a life sentence, the US Justice Department said.

The five men the Justice Department has said will be charged in the attacks of Sept.

A weekly 30 minute review of news and opinion, recorded from a shortwave radio. With times and freqs for listening at home.